


tears

by fossilizedbirds (pigeonsatdawn)



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: (not really) - Freeform, Amends, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Light Angst, Lune - Freeform, Nightmares, Okay Ending, Stakeout, Tears, Tension, if it was better written it could've been angstier, they're trying folks they are, this was poorly written, vulnerable, vulnerable!kieran agenda strong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:46:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26829079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsatdawn/pseuds/fossilizedbirds
Summary: What once was truth may not always remain so; whether he’d believed his own lie because of his emotional state at the time, or had only recently changed and realized his stance of the truth—neither of them knew for sure.
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	tears

**Author's Note:**

> i got the title idea from: shuffling a spotify playlist and taking a word in the first song. (besides, it’s also a nice wordplay. it seems i’ve a thing for double-meaning words.) it’s a lazy title, but i’m running on four hours of sleep and could not care less.

**BEGRUDGINGLY,** Lauren Sinclair had agreed to go on a stakeout with Kieran White in the Grim Goblin. They had been arguing about it—Kieran was against her going to the Grim Goblin at all, knowing the kind of people who frequented the bar, but Lauren insisted, saying it was their only way to find out more about the Seventh Apostle’s mission (and, by some miracle she prayed for, about her parents’ death). So Kieran decided instead to accompany her—besides, it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to do the same thing, and if that was the case, then they would just have a repeat of the Carmine Camelia infiltration, and that didn’t go too well for either of them.

The arguments didn’t end there: because of his reputation as the Purple Hyacinth, Kieran couldn’t be seen with _just_ anyone; he was known for being an unfriendly assassin who worked best alone. It wouldn’t do good to be seen mingling with even a fellow assassin, much less someone unfamiliar, so no disguise would work for Lauren. She proposed that he follow him from the inside while she hides outside, ready to track any member who seemed to be working for the Seventh. She argued that that way, they’d cover more range as well. This obviously didn’t go too well in Kieran’s mind. Kieran, quite ironically in her opinion, didn’t quite trust Lauren enough to be left alone. He’d been reminded of the time she lost her temper upon the single sight of a photograph, so he wasn’t sure what she’d do if she wasn’t being watched, the stakes much higher given that they were literally in what was nearly “home” to so many ruthless criminals.

So again, Kieran got his way, and they ended up staking out near the bar, somewhere they could be hidden and still have a good view of the people coming in and out of the bar. The obvious disadvantage here would be that they wouldn’t be able to listen in on conversations that may have been important, or even figure out why they came to the Grim Goblin to begin with, but Lauren made him compromise to head in the bar if they deem anything of high importance, meaning they see someone highly suspicious. With much reluctance, Kieran agreed, and that was how they ended up crouching behind a tiny wall, watching people come in and out of the hallway that led to the door of the bar.

Except there was a tiny problem neither of them would’ve ever expected: Kieran was falling asleep. When Kieran’s head slowly sank lower, eyelids getting heavier, Lauren didn’t hesitate to smack his back to wake him up. “Oi!” she whispered harshly, “Don’t go dead on me yet.”

Groggily, Kieran looked up at her with weary eyes. He blinked the blur out of his eyes to focus on her irritated face. “M’sorry,” he mumbled, not even having enough energy to utter a joke in response. He was, indeed, exhausted.

And Lauren seemed to notice this. “Did you kill someone last night? Why are you so tired? Did you even sleep at all?”

Kieran’s mouth soured at the way she first accused him of murder, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised, since it was literally his job. “No, I’d been—” he stopped himself before revealing what he had actually been doing. He’d been drawing a lot lately, but perhaps a new addition to his list of odd hobbies was ripping the drawings out. He wasn’t entirely sure why he did this, other than the fact that everything seemed to frustrate him a little more, every passing day. At the Phantom Scythe, even at Lauren herself, but most of all, he seemed to be frustrated at himself the most.

He shook his head instead, and Lauren resisted the urge to prod on; she knew, if the roles were reversed, she wouldn’t like being asked about her personal matters. She brushed it off, opting instead to focus back on the occasional occurrence of people passing by the hallway.

The next time she paid any attention to Kieran, he was already asleep, deep in dreams. Or at least that was what it seemed to her at first, before he started contorting his face with panic, with _fear_ , an emotion she’d never thought to see in him. He had dreamt about—about _her_ , about what he did to her, except here, in his nightmare, he’d dug his fingers in her neck so hard, so deep, to the point where her neck burst out blood. Next thing he saw was her lying in a pool of blood, and in tears, he dropped a bloodstained hyacinth, so bloody it looked less purple than it did red. 

He woke up, heart in tears, and from his eyes—unexpectedly, two streams of tears rolled down silently as he looked at Lauren with bright blue eyes, with so much sorrow, regret, and partial relief that it was a nightmare and that she was still alive, and with fear that he might actually have done that in real life. He could feel his heart—which he thought had hardened sometime ago, when he became a part of the Phantom Scythe, when he grew up to be an assassin—tearing, the way tearing skin and flesh would feel: _painfully_.

Lauren didn’t have enough time to recognize the oddity of everything before he stood up and walked away, from her and the Grim Goblin, as fast as he could. And though she was even more irritated at him for his erratic behavior, she chased for him, calling out to him, not entirely minding her cover anymore.

“Kieran, hey, what the hell was that?” she tried to chastise, but her voice was laced with more worry than rage. She wasn’t entirely sure how to react upon seeing this rare, vulnerable side of the assassin. 

“I need to go,” he simply replied, not even turning back to see her. 

So she grabbed his arm and spun him around with force, causing him to stop in his movements. “What, because you need a good night’s sleep?” she spat.

Kieran shook his head, but it looked as though he was trying to shake away his nightmare more than to Lauren. “No. Lauren, I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t stay close to you.”

Now she got slightly irritated. “You _suggested_ this. This was _your_ idea.”

“Yes,” he ran a hand through his hair frustratedly, “and it appears I have overlooked crucial things.”

“Like what, the fact that you didn’t get enough sleep and would wake up from a nightmare crying?”

“No, like the reason we stopped working together—” He was going to tell her, tell her what he saw and how it felt, when he saw a man who he recognized walk into their line of sight, and mustered up enough courage to grab her as gently as possible, pulling her into a shaded corridor where they couldn’t be seen. The corridor was narrow, and their bodies were pushed uncomfortably close to each other, causing him to immediately drop his hands from her body, hands curling into his palm. He didn’t fail to notice the way she had tensed up as well, and proved his point: “I hurt you, and I make you feel unsafe.”

Lauren remembered what he’d said the other day, and noted: “What happened to being able to strangle me with your bare hands and not shedding a tear?” She began to wonder, since she was sure he wasn’t lying when he’d said it, and yet here he was, shedding tears over the mere _thought_ of hurting her again.

Kieran simply glared at her, though there wasn’t much sting to it. “As you can see, that no longer holds true, so let’s…” he sighed, and said in the trace of a whisper, “let’s stop torturing each other like this.”

Lauren paused for a second, surprised at the sincerity of his words. Then she scoffed. “What makes you think I care about how you feel about this? If you’re horrified by what you did, _good_.”

Kieran sighed again, and Lauren almost regretted having said what she did, as clearly he was not in the mood to argue. “Does it make you that happy to see me suffer, even if it means you’re constantly reminded of what I did to you? As long as it makes me suffer too?”

She was going to agree, say something aggravating, when she saw the genuinely tired expression on his face. So reluctantly, she told him honestly, “I… I need you. I think we both know how we need each other for this to work. What I feel, what you feel… It's nothing compared to what we need to do. To how I’ll feel when the Seventh Apostle decides to blow everything to smithereens. So you need to stay.”

Kieran looked into her golden eyes, and though he wanted to argue, she’d made a point. It had always been the reason he still insisted on working with her, but this time he’d let his emotions take over. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, because their feelings will always be in contrast to what they knew needed to be done. He wasn’t sure if he was as strong as Lauren, whether he could stand always having to be near her, to be reminded of the nasty side of him.

Lauren saw the hesitation, so equally as hesitantly, she took his hand, holding it the way they had shaken on the bridge that night. Surprised by the gesture, his eyes widened, but he was rendered speechless. She turned away her eyes from him, not quite liking the sentiment in it. “A temporary truce. Look… neither of us like this, want this. But we’ve got to. No one else will do it. Maybe… use this as a chance to prove that there’s any human left in you.” She brought her eyes back to his. “Make it up to me.”

He looked down at his hand in hers—both trembling very slightly—and he nodded with effort. “Okay,” he agreed. “That, at least, I’ll do.” He looked back at her, but neither of them were very good at handling the raw emotion shared in their eye contact, so they broke it in a split second, and retracted their hands. 

The stakeout was a fruitless one, they concluded as they went their separate ways home, but at the very least they’d manage to root their relationship somewhere other than rocks.

**Author's Note:**

> sleep deprived me strikes again with another angst, because apparently my emotional writing improves a ton when my brain shuts down. (which also leads to the writing quality being reduced, because there is no logical thought put into the works.) 
> 
> i just recently joined the discord server and that's how i got like most of the inspiration behind this piece of crap. i thought about the plot and fell asleep before getting to write it (and it sounded way angstier in my head than it is now), and woke up and immediately wrote it before i lose the mood again. 
> 
> i was planning to continue my fluff works but HERE we ARE with more (light) ANGST
> 
> enjoy, kudos and comments are always appreciated <3 have a good day or night depending on where you live :D
> 
> (in case you want to know how bad my sleeping schedule is: i fell asleep about 7 a.m., woke up 11 a.m., wrote this from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. i have issues.)


End file.
